The fact that doing a filesystem-level end run around is simpler and more reliable boggles my mind. When I started experimenting with it I thought "this will never work, there's all sorts of things that can go wrong" but I eventually wound up migrating all of my PHP-based applications (WordPress, Piwik, and PMWiki) to it because it was so much easier to work with (even with maintaining the control software) than doing it the standard way.